The sharp fall in As and A*s came on the day that the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, was accused of "adding insult to injury" for suggesting no one would be interested in students' exam results in 10 years' time anyway.
Five thousand fewer students in England gained three A* grades than in 2022, while the proportion of top A*-A grades shrank from 35.9% to 26.5% within a year, with 67,000 fewer top grades awarded this year.
The proportion of A* grades awarded in England was 8.6% - a steep fall on the 14.5% awarded last year and but still above the 7.7% awarded in 2019. The proportion of A* and A grades combined were also higher than in 2019, by 0.7 percentage points.
Headteachers said they were alarmed to see that in some cases grading was even more stringent than for the last set of A-level exams taken before the pandemic, with the proportion of A*-C grades this year lower than those awarded in 2019 because of a sharp increase in the number of lowest grades.
For the first time, more than one in 10 entries in England were awarded an E or U (unclassified) - a 10% increase on such grades in 2019. The increase is likely to be the result of more students taking A-levels based on their GCSE results, which were decided by teacher assessment after exams were cancelled in 2021.
There was a large gap in the number of top grades between England's results and those in Wales and Northern Ireland, where regulators have taken into account the long-term impact of the pandemic through more generous grading.
Northern Ireland awarded A*-A grades to 37.5% of its A-level entries, while Wales awarded 34%, in stark contrast to the 26.5% in England.
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